


gold

by diminishedmercury



Series: Mercury One Shots [7]
Category: RWBY
Genre: Abuse mentioned, F/M, Post-Volume 6 (RWBY), mercury has feelings and can't handle them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-15 18:32:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18504667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diminishedmercury/pseuds/diminishedmercury
Summary: The world is full of black and white and grey. He misses the color at times, but it’s not as if he’ll ever get to see it again. He relies on descriptions from Emerald to paint a picture of the world around him and if she ever wonders why he asks about colors, she doesn’t say anything about it. It’s the closest thing to caring that he’ll ever get to with her.Life is bland, dull, boring, but it’s life and that’s more than he could say he had when he was stuck in Hell with Marcus. Turning everything off was easier to live with. Easier to maintain.But everything always seemed to come back to bite him right on the ass.





	gold

**Author's Note:**

> Based on some light tumblr readings and my own headcanons as to what Mercury's semblance once upon a time was:  
> Mercury's semblance was the ability to physically see the emotions of other people. It was always active and he saw emotions in color. Because of this, it made him weaker as an assassin in Marcus' eyes. He could see the fear in someone's eyes when he was about to kill them and this made Mercury hesitate- he was once an extremely empathetic character when he still had access to this semblance. But, once it was taken away, Mercury suppressed everything down to the smallest feelings and in return, was given a world of black and white to see when he was eight. He mostly got his descriptions of color from Em, who still very much is empathetic even if she ignores it to do the wrong things.
> 
> Pyrrha and Mercury were briefly involved while he was at Beacon in this as well, though Mercury didn't see it as serious as Pyrrha had. He'd only been doing for information and because he was bored. Mercury is,,, not a good guy, but he's working on it in this fic.

There are times that Mercury feels he just doesn’t _understand_ people. It’s hard for him to understand the need to cry, scream, or shout. Hard for him to understand the need to feel so _attached_ to another living creature (human or Faunus or otherwise). Getting upset won’t change anything at all- and being dependent only sets yourself up for failure. So, he genuinely doesn’t understand people. He used to, he thinks, back before ol Daddy stole away his semblance, but that doesn’t matter anymore and it was so long ago that he hardly remembers the feelings he used to have access to.

He wonders what he would have been like if he hadn’t lost that power at times. He might be closer to Em. He might care about Cinder in more than just a “you give me money to survive” sort of way. He might have actually cried when he heard Pyrrha was gone. But there’s a disconnect there and he doesn’t know how to breach the gap any longer.

He still doesn’t know what sort of person that makes him. He knows he’s not a _good_ person, not in the way that Ruby and her little friends are, but he doesn’t think that he’s necessarily the _worst_ person. Just a realist. Just someone who sees a way to survive and takes it. He still feels some things after all. He still feels a pang of sorrow every so often when he catches a glimpse of hair that looks too much like a Greek warrior, still feels a tinge of glee when a fight is truly challenging. It’s not all gone, but he still doesn’t know what to do with any of it. The world is full of black and white and grey. He misses the color at times, but it’s not as if he’ll ever get to see it again. He relies on descriptions from Emerald to paint a picture of the world around him and if she ever wonders why he asks about colors, she doesn’t say anything about it. It’s the closest thing to caring that he’ll ever get to with her.

Life is bland, dull, boring, but it’s life and that’s more than he could say he had when he was stuck in Hell with Marcus. Turning everything off was easier to live with. Easier to maintain.

But everything always seemed to come back to bite him right on the ass. It’s in the middle of the fight with Yang when it happens (the second time around he’d fought her). He’s taunting Ruby one moment, ready to counter whatever she planned to throw at him, and the next he’s seeing a flash of _gold_ out of the corner of his eye and he’s thrown off long enough for Ruby to headbutt him right in the chin. He turns towards the source with a startled sort of desperation, eyes wide and teeth grit together tightly. He sees it again. Gold. Bright as the sun once was to him. Gold, gold, gold. The fight is a blur after that and he’s grabbing at that gold and latched on. He wants her to stop just for a moment. Just to let him soak this in, but she’s pulling away from him, her prosthetic still in his hand, and running down, down, down towards the fight brewing below them.

She’s gold. Covered in it. And it’s so breathtakingly beautiful that he’s frightened by it. He hasn’t had these feelings since he was _eight_ and yet here they are now. He hasn’t thought of something as beautiful since he saw the red of roses. He hasn’t wanted to reach out and _touch_ since his mother left him. He hasn’t wanted to own and call something his own since he saw that puppy in the window front on his seventh birthday.

He’s scared out of his mind and when she comes back up, relic in hand, he can see it glow just as bright as she does. Somewhere distantly he hears Emerald shriek and he’s trying to get her to just leave, eyes still stuck on gold, but she won’t listen and he’s caught in a spell. This must have been what Aphrodite looked like. Or Athena. Or any of the goddesses. He doesn’t know, but he’s frozen in place, hand reaching out blindly for his companion. He can’t leave her here, as easy as it would be.

He manages to pull his eyes away from the sight when Emerald summons that _thing_ with that mind of hers and yanks her into his arms, following after Hazel like his ass had just been lit on fire.

He wants to ignore it and tell himself that Emerald was just pulling a sick joke on him. That she was the one who did it, but he can’t lie to himself for long. She can’t make him see color any more than she can have Cinder’s affections. He asks her to do it only once and she complies, but it doesn’t work and he’s frustrated. He doesn’t understand why he sees _her_ in gold. He’s angry enough that he agitates Emerald and suddenly (it’s the smallest flash he’s seen in his life) he sees red on her. He doesn’t understand, _he doesn’t understand_ , **_he doesn’t understand._**

He finds himself longing for gold more nights than not. He wonders if Pyrrha would have been anything like her. He wonders if she could have forced him to see color too, had she been given the time to. He thinks back to their time at Beacon and he can’t help but to feel a sharp stab in the stomach at the way he’d used her for his own entertainment. She was falling in love and he was only in lust. He longs for a life he could have met her after seeing gold. He’s been emotional, shocking for him, and angry and he’s been _feeling_ things.

It’s the first time he actually lets him cry over her since she’s died. It’s Yang’s fault, he reasons. He hasn’t felt these things in so, so long and yet now he magically does because he saw the color she burned within. He wasn’t in love with Pyrrha, they’d only been fooling around behind closed doors and been on a few dates here and there, but he feels like he could have been if she’d been given a better time to meet him (but, if he hadn’t felt anything, he’d have stopped seeing her after the first time and he certainly wouldn’t have asked her to the dance).

He resigns himself to his new fate when he sees a flash of color again, a deep burning red that almost makes him stumble back, in Salem when she hears that Ozpin is alive. He still doesn’t know how to cope with these feelings, but he thinks that the only thing he can do now is go back to the source of them.

He wakes Emerald late in the night, tells her to grab her weapon, and then they’re leaving. They can’t take bags and there’s nothing that would fill it anyways. He hates this (and, he realizes, he’s grateful that he _can_ hate anything at all).

It was time for a trip to Atlas.


End file.
